Tag: Dungeons and Dragons
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Legacy of the Crystal Shard–D&D Encounters S16 S0
Everybody DANCE now!
Yes! it is that time again! Week Zero–Character Creation Week! One of the best parts of the D&D Encounters concept of public play is that it brings wildly different people to the table–and at no time is this more fun than during Character Creation!
I am a big believer in 4d6-the lowest for all stats.
This Season of Encounters we did this in a fun group way in which we went around the table taking turns rolling our stats in order–STR! DEX! CON! INT! WIS! CHA!
Because of some truly horrible rolling I let the party decide if they wanted one bonus roll which they could use for any stat, but they would have to keep it no matter what. I made it one of those classic D&D Challenges in which the entire group had to agree & since their were 9 players and one DM I knew it would be a challenge to overcome the defiant ones…The party was able to convince even the most contrarian player to go for the reroll [a good sign for the coming season, as every DM knows]. The rolled the bonus stat & it worked out well for everyone.
Jack, Jake, & Thor had a blast during character creation.
Carlos was fairly new to the process–as were we all–we did not have a book just a mashed up collection of printouts and one tablet. Jake was using his phone. We really should have gone with Pathfinder or 4E that actually have books–using printouts is silly.
Jack did do some great custom portraits for several players.
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Murder in Baldur’s Gate–D&D Encounters S15 S13
Another wild week of D&D Encounters at Mercenary Market.Jack went big at Subway before tonights game, but was ready for his Elf Ranger to finish things.
A poor picture of Brian’s Movember contribution.
Scott and Jake are very much into the campaign.
The barbarian bros–Thor & John were in rare form this week.
Again, I had a huge amount of space to run my character–even when we combined all the players on one table there was still way more than enough space.
Jack is using this awesome mini which he picked up at Con earlier this year.
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Murder in Baldur’s Gate–D&D Encounters S15 S12
The penultimate week of D&D Encounters Season 15, Murder at Baldur’s Gate, at Mercenary Market was a huge success.Jack, Brian, Scott, & I got there early and had a fun Sushi dinner with our waitress Randy, whose real name may be Brandy, but Brian is insane, so I am not really sure. In any event, there is no way that you will please her phsycially, so it likely does not matter…
Brian spent most of his time listening to Pelor [or maybe Pantera] and ranting like a mad man. Scott finds this stuff very funny, but it may just be a giant waste of valuable adventuring time!
DM Will is running a very fun game.
John is one of the greatest Role Players of all time–he is playing Ivan the Half-Orc Barbarian who is somehow Scottish and generally ranting.
Here he is in action.
It is just fun to watch a kid having this much fun at a D&D Table.
And the table is good–we have a lot of room for everything. Including snacks.
Jack scored the only Crit of the night & we are still not exactly sure how the current critical hit rules work. We went with roll damage dice twice, do not apply Ability Bonus on the second roll. So with a long bow this was 2d8+3. Please leave me a comment if you have ideas on how Crits should be handled.
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Kill the Shaman
This is my first post on the Bake on this blog, so I will provide more background on the players involved in this campaign. But first a picture of my dice!
The Bake is the longest running campaign I have ever played. It is basically a beer and pretzel game that meets in Vandales Garage once a month on Thursday.Brett is the host & we generally show up around 7:00 PM, have some Pizza delivered, and then head into Eberron.
DM James has been our DM for the last few years. He is fantastic.
The Bake is an Eberron Campaign that is very steeped in the lore of Eberron–we have had players join our campaign historically that really know Eberron stuff, but currently we are a little short on lore knowledge.
Andrew is playing a Genasi Warden–a defender for sure. His characters name is Bemin and he is likely the most tactical player ever week. He also generally knows what is going on and has a great memory for Campaign history.
Cameron is playing a Wilden Invoker named Fiddenmar. As our controller he is really fantastic, but Cameron’s real strength is actually having a plan. As a rather rules light informal game Brett and I often go off half cocked and get the party in all sorts of trouble. Cameron is basically in charge of getting us back on track.
David is a relatively new player to the campaign, but is definitely our most knowledgeable D&D player–he knows all the rules, effects, etc. He has also rebuilt several of the characters to be a whole lot more Min/Max’d so that the party right now is way more effective than we have ever been before.
James generally runs about three sessions of investigation, roll playing, and clueless hi-jinks before a massive fight breaks out.
This week was fight week!We had released a bunch of undead giants [Eberron giants are super strong–basically gods] who had besieged Stormreach. This week we attempted to take out this Shaman who was created clouds of shadow snakes and other wise charging the city with necrotic energy that was waking the dead every 15 minutes.
He was huge, contained a shadow serpent inside of him, and was basically unbeatable–Brett’s ranger Vassa burned a daily, action pointed, and burned another daily for 258 points of damage in one round. And the thing was not bloodied.
it was a big long drawn out fight with a lot of consequences for the characters. For example, my hero, who is a variety of different shardminds [Kubaba the Sorcerer, Akuba the Avenger, Bukaka the Warlord, etc.] was rejoined together and with the main thread of his fate and he gained additional knowledge of the Gate and its relationship to the Draconic Prophecy. -
Murder in Baldur’s Gate–D&D Encounters S15 S11
Another great week of D&D Encounters at Mercenary Market in Costa Mesa.Scott was there when we arrived at the shop–ready for his amazing Bard to continue his party leadership.
Brian was in rare form this week–I think that the your mom joke meter hit 15–some of them were fantastic, but he did fall back on a few old classics.
Eric, the Drunk Monk, ran out of Ale this week–a real party tragedy!
Derek joined our table for his first D&D experience This man owns a Nintendo DS2–which I had never seen before, claims Thor as his nickname, and earned the nickname Broody this week.
DM Will took a while to get us running–we have split into two tables–with DM Nick having Diem, Sara, Cory, Jake, & Sean who was also playing his first game of D&D.
Great to see the turnout continue to increase & new players show up–this is exactly what Encounters is designed to do.
I had tons of space again this week to run Xenagos the Ragging Sage Mage
Martial law has been declared at Baldur’s Gate. There was a large explosion at the funeral casket makers shop in the lower city, homes & shops were damaged and 7 people killed when a coffin was dropped and exploded.
The Heroes of the Wide headed to the Hall of Records to see who was behind this. Turns out the shipments were for Scoond, the Duke’s right hand who is living in Cescar Gates, a haunted mansion in the rich part of town.
We went to question him & ended up killing him and his guards.
The party worked well together in combat.
The bard’s initial plan to lock them all down did not work that well, but it slowed them down enough for us to get the jump on them.
We got into the manor and killed Scoond.
There was a flurry of crits at the end of the night.Derek scored two back to back.
And the Drunk Monk closed the night with a classic Boss Crit
David Given Schwarm 